Acer Iconia Smart: huge screen, loves video

We weren't able to get quite everywhere at Mobile World Congress, and one of the new arrivals we missed was the Acer Iconia Smart announced earlier in the week.

Maybe we missed it because it was hiding behind itself, as with a ginormous 4.8in screen this Android-powered Acer really is pushing the concept of smartphone. In fact, we've seen tablets with smaller screens.

The Iconia Smart actually took a bow late last year, but Acer has kept us waiting on a name until now. It's pretty clear from that screen size, and the cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio, that this is a phone aimed at the video buff. Witness the HDMI port and DLNA technology if you're still in doubt, though these are becoming fairly standard features anyway.

The resolution is an unusual 1,024 x 480 – a result of that 21:9 aspect ratio. That should help when viewing long web pages in portrait mode, or wanting a more zoomed in view – albeit a shallow one – when in landscape orientation.

There's an 8-megapixel LED flash-assisted camera round the back partnered by a 2MP front-facing effort for video calls.

Android Gingerbread is the OS of choice, though it's the unexpectedly rare version 2.3 on board only otherwise found on the Google Nexus S. Everyone else is going 2.4 these days.

Nothing on price and availability from Acer yet, though this one won't be cheap.